this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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They have to protect their IPs, it is what they have to do by law if they don't want to lose then.
https://www.varnumlaw.com/insights/enforce-your-intellectual-property-or-risk-losing-it/
So it is not really Nintendo's fault that the IP laws are the way they are.
the fact that its law doesnt necessarily mean the right or moral thing. just means lobbyists might have been paid for it.
Doesn't change a thing, Nintendo is bound by law to protect their IPs.
Why the law is this way and if it should be changed (which it should IMHO) are completely different questions.
i think we are mostly arguing that it has to be changed when this topic comes up. its not just nintendo and not just games though too.
Yes, like many things in the space of copyright and patents, this should be changed and defanged.
But the only changes we will ever see is making it more and more into a weapon against consumers. Nintendo, Disney and all the other big IP holders will never allow for anything else, they will use their money and power to prevent it.
if we continue doing nothing about it, yeah
I understand needing to protect your IP, in some sense, but what I'm getting at is that when a fan game is made, it is a homage to a beloved franchise that fosters love for the IP. If you were a smart company, you would foster this love for your franchise, to entrench the fans you already have, and to gather more fans because you are seen as the company that "does no wrong", which in turn also increases your profits. Imagine if instead of taking these love letters to your franchise down (which makes you look like an absolute fucking ass to most), you made a feature of it on an official channel. Look at Scott Cawthon and his Five Nights at Freddy's franchise. He encourages people to make fan games using his original ideas and that encourages people to not only love his own games, but to go out and start developing their own little games that include ideas that Scott may not have even thought about including before. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is a good way of protecting your IP by taking down blatant rip offs of your game that want to steal money from your fans, and cause confusion to new fans. Then there is the bad way, which is taking down these passionate love letters to your franchise that encourage others to look at the original source and see why they even decided to take the time to create the fan game in the first place. IF the fan game is trying to monetize, then by all means, send a warning. Tell them to not monetize it, and they are free to continue. If they continue, Cease and Desist. Hopefully that makes sense.
If they would carte blanche allow fan games of their IPs then that would weaken the IPs, which could lead to them loosing the IPs completly. For that it is irrelevant if the games are monetized or not.
Nintendo would need to implement some kind of process for developers of fan games to get them officially licensed. But for that to be effective as a tool to protect the IP they could not just give such a limited fan game license to everyone who request it, so a complex request process with multiple steps would be needed, and they would need to deny lots if not even most of the requests.
And this gets even more complicated when the very complex japan software patent system is added to the mix.
Could Nintendo be less shitty? Oh yes they could, but they decided to go the Cobra Kai way and strike first, strike hard, no merci!